Nutplates are extensively used in, for example, aircraft. They serve as anchoring devices and require several manual and power tool operations to install. For example, the installation of nutplates is required on the fixed leading edges of both the 757 and 767 model commercial aircraft being manufactured by the Boeing company. Each model presently requires approximately 1000 nutplates per wing ship set. Various steps are involved in installing a nutplate, and these are quite labor intensive. These steps, described with reference to FIG. 1, involve the following operations: (1) a pilot hole 1 is drilled in the structural part 2; (2) two rivet holes 3 are drilled adjacent to the pilot hole and countersunk; (3) the pilot hole is opened up to final screw hole size; (4) all three holes are deburred by hand; (5) rivets 4 are inserted by hand in a one by one fashion into the rivet holes; (6) a holding screw (not shown) is placed in the center screw hole, the nutplate 5 is positioned over the rivets which were installed during step (5) and the holding screw is then tightened; (7) the rivets are swaged one by one; and (8) the holding screw is removed completing the installation.
It is readily apparent that when this eight step procedure is repeated for the 1000 nutplates per wing ship set as noted above, a considerable investment in manhours is required.
Any measure which would reduce the total steps required to install the nutplates would be useful.